===========================================================================
I rarely learned a phrase that was new to me from American Presidents. Of course we had to mug up Lincoln's Gettysburg speech going: "Four score and seven years ago..." because it was there in our school text. And there was this famous inaugural speech of Kennedy with the quotable quote: "Ask not what your country can do for you...", which became such a fashion statement of his that I saw it painted on a Railway Wall of KGP with loud attribution to him. I was amused to learn recently that he quietly lifted it from his old Headmaster (...I am happy to be in the good company of Kennedy and possibly his old HM?). Apparently JFK's old schoolmates got enraged:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056020/JFK-stole-ask-country-speech-old-headmaster.html
But I did learn a new phrase from a speech of Obama. He referred to the botched arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr as a 'teaching moment' for the Police. It doesn't matter that it apparently turned out to be a teaching moment for himself:
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/obamas-teaching-moment-was-his-own
I just Googled for "Teaching Moment" and got 308,000 results in 0.30 seconds. So, it is not Obama's original phrase nor did he claim so. But, for me, it was new and I liked it very much because I have been in this business of teaching and learning all my life. In 'teaching moments' I include 'learning moments' since they have a symbiotic relation. One sustains the other. I guess Thurber's Editor wouldn't object to that word 'sustain' I used just now. Apparently, when he found his cub reporter writing in journalese: "...they sustained severe injuries", Thurber's Editor lifted the paperweight on the table and held it aloft in his arm and said: "This is what is meant by sustaining".
***************************************************************************************************************
So here are a few of my own many 'Teaching Moments':
My HM Father was also our English Teacher. Since our School in Muthukur was started just then, we had to travel to our District HQ, Nellore, to appear in our School Final Board Exams. My Father as an Invigilator and I as an Examinee traveled to Nellore and stayed in our Uncle's House for the week. My Father was a BA from Christian College, Madras, while my Uncle was an MA (Hons) in English, and a known Shakespeare Scholar.
The morning before my English Exam, my Uncle entered our Room and asked me in jest: "What is a gerund?" and I gave the stock reply taught by my Father: "present participle". My Uncle smiled at both of us and said: "Every present participle is not a gerund" and left the room.
That was my first Teaching Moment, and perhaps of my Father too, to be careful with words. There was no Google then and anyway I happened to go into Physics rather than English. So, it was only much later I learned the subtle difference between the two. See, for example:
http://www.myenglishgrammar.com/english/lesson-15-gerunds-and-present-participles.html
Many amateurs like me use the vogue word 'nuance' rather loosely. It is only recently that I read a striking example in a Literary Review. Apparently someone misquoted the Shakespeare line from Hamlet as:
"Methinks, the lady doth protest too much"
which apparently has a different nuance than that of the original:
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks"
That surely was a Teaching Moment for me not to misquote, at least, Shakespeare.
MSS was my First Physics Teacher at KGP. And none else of my contemporaries (perhaps seniors too) understood how to solve problems with pulleys and strings and weights and inclined planes and rolling spheres although we mugged up Newton's Laws, but were using our intuition instead and getting wrong answers. After solving two problems for me, MSS said:
"Trust Newtons' Laws"
That was a typical Teaching Moment for me. I never looked back. MSS also narrated the story of a very very Senior Professor. Apparently, the Senior Prof summoned MSS one day to his Chamber and said:
"All answers in the Chapter, Electrical Circuits, in this book are wrong"
MSS looked into one of his Solutions and said, naughtily:
"You should write to the author"
and quit. I asked MSS:
"Was he trusting Kirchoff's laws?".
MSS smiled and said: "No"
Physics is baffling because it divides what is essentially indivisible into various Subjects. I mean, the whole Universe is its subject matter. And so it is no use if you are an expert in various Subjects; you have to make Connections within you. Here only a Teacher who did it can help.
One evening, Vibhat Nair came to my room and ordered:
"Explain to me in a few words why Synchrotron Radiation has all those predominant X-ray frequencies while it is only a point charge going in a circle"
That was a Teaching Moment of sorts to me. Next morning when I met him near the Lockers, I told him: "It is like Doppler Effect". I could see from the light in his eyes that it was a Learning Moment for him which he won't easily forget.
The other day Pratik and I were talking about the (in)famous Clausius-Mossotti Equation that troubled me greatly till I read a nice derivation of it in Purcell. And we got talking about the macro- and micro- stuff which Pratik said always bothered him. That made me tell him:
"The atomic or molecular polarizability which you get from Spectroscopy in our Final Year Lab (once upon a time) is micro, while the dielectric constant that you measure in the Second Year Lab (once upon a time) is macro. The relation between the two is the Clausius-Mossotti Equation"
One rarely gets praise from Pratik; but he wrote:
"I love your summaries"
Aha Moment for both of us...
===========================================================================
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
Fantastic Narrative
===========================================================================
Here is a True Story sent to me by one who has a flair for writing...Commotion Recollected in Tranquility...after a good fifteen years...it ought to have gone surreptitiously into the Diamond Meet Souvenir...
***************************************************************************************************************
Dear Sir:
On New Year's Eve, 1996, a friend and I extracted a bottle of whiskey and some cola from a wing senior as a promised job treat. The senior was averse to drinking and did not have more than a sip or two and left us to our devices, and my friend and I both had some personal woes to drown so we did not mind.
After half the bottle was over, we were both still sober, and did the rounds of the wing, trying to scandalize those of our friends and juniors who were still teetotallers.
Then we went back to finish the rest of the bottle. But slowly we ran out of the cola, so as time progressed we were drinking the whiskey raw, which was too much for either of us to handle.
I have little recollection of the rest of the night, except that a huge fight took place in my room, and then at what must have been around two in the night, I was lying on the bed laid down on the floor of a different room, and nearby was lying my friend, with what looked like stitches on his cheek.
I was missing my favourite Duckback jacket, but I braved the cold to walk the length of the wing to my room, only to find its lock broken and the bed on the floor and whole room ransacked. I felt too disoriented to put things in order, so I made the quickest possible decision to maintain status quo as far as sleeping arrangements were concerned, and returned to where my friend was lying, lay down next to him, and woke up next morning just in time for the first period.
Now, I am not superstitious as such, but I did not want to miss the first lecture of the New Year.
To make things worse, it was HNA teaching electronics. Most of it went over my head, and half the time I felt like puking into the sink that was right next to me, much to the amusement of my classmates who were on to the story by then. HNA, of course, did not notice.
The next period was MLM's, of all people.
My classmates persuaded me to bunk that class, and when I reached the hostel, I was updated by my wingmates about my activities the previous night.
Apparently, I had locked myself in, and was in tremendous discomfort, and was rolling all over the place, shouting, and in KGP lingo, gave my own room a CG, and someone had to go round the balcony at the back to rescue me. In the process, I had puked on my bed, my jacket and on my friends.
My drinking partner meanwhile had gone off to dance with some SNites/IGites who had come to party in our hall. He managed to fall and break his glasses, and the metal frame went into his cheek. He was apparently unaware of the bleeding, and only when someone noticed the blood spurting forth was he taken to a doctor, who stitched him up, remarking that no anesthesia would be needed.
All this while one of my wingmates stood guard over me, and apparently I was doing somersaults (according to him) eluding him while also tried to hang on to his lungi.
That, I would say, was a very close brush with MLM.
**********************************************************************************************************
Here is my reply:
*****************************************************************
Dear Story-Teller:
Great to hear that hilarious story from you...we will talk about it if and when we meet next, in greater detail.
As to my own brushes with alcohol, the best story has already been blogged...about that Russian Mam who made me eat beef-pelmeny and wash it down with raw Russian Vodka...the rest pale before that because it was too much for a born vegetarian South Indian Brahmin. Here is a story I didn't blog so far:
During the early 1970s I was pushed into SDM's lap and the shove was too much for me and things were going wrong with our publication activity...he sent our first Joint Paper to JETP whence it bounced, and then to Czech Journal of Physics who went into hibernation for a year.
That was too much for a loner like me. Folks said that Kingfisher is good to drown one's sorrows in, and one evening, I WALKED all the way to Gole Bazaar and entered into the dingy Anarkali at around 7 PM. And ordered a Beer and started sipping it in a lonely cubicle meant for six or so.
Half way through, three of my third year B Sc Physics (EMT) students walked into my cubicle and it was thoroughly embarrassing on both sides. They kept their cool and I my head. And we made small talk till I gulped the bottle and walked out, took a rickshaw and rushed to my Faculty Hostel for some grub.
That was my last bout with alcohol.
gps
============================================================================
Here is a True Story sent to me by one who has a flair for writing...Commotion Recollected in Tranquility...after a good fifteen years...it ought to have gone surreptitiously into the Diamond Meet Souvenir...
***************************************************************************************************************
Dear Sir:
On New Year's Eve, 1996, a friend and I extracted a bottle of whiskey and some cola from a wing senior as a promised job treat. The senior was averse to drinking and did not have more than a sip or two and left us to our devices, and my friend and I both had some personal woes to drown so we did not mind.
After half the bottle was over, we were both still sober, and did the rounds of the wing, trying to scandalize those of our friends and juniors who were still teetotallers.
Then we went back to finish the rest of the bottle. But slowly we ran out of the cola, so as time progressed we were drinking the whiskey raw, which was too much for either of us to handle.
I have little recollection of the rest of the night, except that a huge fight took place in my room, and then at what must have been around two in the night, I was lying on the bed laid down on the floor of a different room, and nearby was lying my friend, with what looked like stitches on his cheek.
I was missing my favourite Duckback jacket, but I braved the cold to walk the length of the wing to my room, only to find its lock broken and the bed on the floor and whole room ransacked. I felt too disoriented to put things in order, so I made the quickest possible decision to maintain status quo as far as sleeping arrangements were concerned, and returned to where my friend was lying, lay down next to him, and woke up next morning just in time for the first period.
Now, I am not superstitious as such, but I did not want to miss the first lecture of the New Year.
To make things worse, it was HNA teaching electronics. Most of it went over my head, and half the time I felt like puking into the sink that was right next to me, much to the amusement of my classmates who were on to the story by then. HNA, of course, did not notice.
The next period was MLM's, of all people.
My classmates persuaded me to bunk that class, and when I reached the hostel, I was updated by my wingmates about my activities the previous night.
Apparently, I had locked myself in, and was in tremendous discomfort, and was rolling all over the place, shouting, and in KGP lingo, gave my own room a CG, and someone had to go round the balcony at the back to rescue me. In the process, I had puked on my bed, my jacket and on my friends.
My drinking partner meanwhile had gone off to dance with some SNites/IGites who had come to party in our hall. He managed to fall and break his glasses, and the metal frame went into his cheek. He was apparently unaware of the bleeding, and only when someone noticed the blood spurting forth was he taken to a doctor, who stitched him up, remarking that no anesthesia would be needed.
All this while one of my wingmates stood guard over me, and apparently I was doing somersaults (according to him) eluding him while also tried to hang on to his lungi.
That, I would say, was a very close brush with MLM.
**********************************************************************************************************
Here is my reply:
*****************************************************************
Dear Story-Teller:
Great to hear that hilarious story from you...we will talk about it if and when we meet next, in greater detail.
As to my own brushes with alcohol, the best story has already been blogged...about that Russian Mam who made me eat beef-pelmeny and wash it down with raw Russian Vodka...the rest pale before that because it was too much for a born vegetarian South Indian Brahmin. Here is a story I didn't blog so far:
During the early 1970s I was pushed into SDM's lap and the shove was too much for me and things were going wrong with our publication activity...he sent our first Joint Paper to JETP whence it bounced, and then to Czech Journal of Physics who went into hibernation for a year.
That was too much for a loner like me. Folks said that Kingfisher is good to drown one's sorrows in, and one evening, I WALKED all the way to Gole Bazaar and entered into the dingy Anarkali at around 7 PM. And ordered a Beer and started sipping it in a lonely cubicle meant for six or so.
Half way through, three of my third year B Sc Physics (EMT) students walked into my cubicle and it was thoroughly embarrassing on both sides. They kept their cool and I my head. And we made small talk till I gulped the bottle and walked out, took a rickshaw and rushed to my Faculty Hostel for some grub.
That was my last bout with alcohol.
gps
============================================================================
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Coffee Table & Dinner Table
==========================================================================
Yesterday evening I got the best of recent gifts from Samit & Pratik. They were a great team indeed!
The first was a gorgeous hard-covered Coffee Table Book titled:
"Sixty Years in the Service of the Nation: An Illustrated History of IIT Kharagpur"
It must have cost a thousand rupees at the least. Its 271 pages are full of delightful drawings (mostly by one Swapan Bala whose name doesn't ring a bell for me), 'old is gold' black & white photographs, and authoritative write-ups of the 6-decade-history of IIT KGP. It was great to browse. Its byline has, among others, the team of:
Dharam Vir
Dhrubajyoti Sen
Priyadarshi Patnaik
Arnab Kumar Hazra
In the main body of Acknowledgments I was delighted to find my name (who wouldn't?) The thing reads: "The blog-site of Professor G. P. Sastry also provided us with helpful information."
This reminded me of a mythological tidbit told me by my Father as to how the squirrel got its stripes on its back. Apparently Raam was coolly watching the building of the bridge to Lanka (the controversial Ram Sethu) by his monkey-warriors. They were all carrying huge boulders and dumping them in the sea tirelessly. A squirrel watching the commotion and the radiant face of Lord Raam had this desire to help in the supreme ongoing effort of Civil Engineering. And couldn't resist.
So, on a pious impulse, it dug itself into the sand, came up, ran to the seashore, and shook itself like the KGP dog does when he is bored, so that the sand sticking to its body dropped into the sea, thus contributing its pennyworth. It ran back and forth again and again and again till it stood stock still when it ran out of breath. Watching the squirrel, Raam walked down and held the squirrel up in his left palm and, with his three right fingers, stroked down its back gently in loving Acknowledgment, leaving those permanent indelible marks of his running fingerprints.
***************************************************************************************************************
The other is the lovely Dinner Table Book titled:
"60 Years of Department of Physics & Meteorology"
It is Dinner Table Book because, though thinner and less expensive, it took that much more time to read, chew and digest than the Coffee One. Needless to say, my good name is there in a dozen places (I didn't count though) including the From the Desk of the HOD by Samit. As expected, Pratik decided to be Anonymous...after me, he will be the most modest.
The sentence that tickled me pink goes under the photo item of my Guru SDM:
"Prof. G. P. Sastry, who is admired for his pedagogy, worked on the electrodynamics of anisotropic media and Cherenkov radiation for his Ph D under the supervision of Prof. Datta Majumdar."
That is because the word 'pedagogy' always amused me somehow.
See the Limerick I posted long long ago:
**************************************************************************************************************
Dedicated to my younger colleagues Professors Somnath Bharadwaj and Pratik Khastigir.
And indebted to Dr. Shyamal Chakrabarty (didn't do spell-checks) for this free-for-all art form...
===========================================================================
Yesterday evening I got the best of recent gifts from Samit & Pratik. They were a great team indeed!
The first was a gorgeous hard-covered Coffee Table Book titled:
"Sixty Years in the Service of the Nation: An Illustrated History of IIT Kharagpur"
It must have cost a thousand rupees at the least. Its 271 pages are full of delightful drawings (mostly by one Swapan Bala whose name doesn't ring a bell for me), 'old is gold' black & white photographs, and authoritative write-ups of the 6-decade-history of IIT KGP. It was great to browse. Its byline has, among others, the team of:
Dharam Vir
Dhrubajyoti Sen
Priyadarshi Patnaik
Arnab Kumar Hazra
In the main body of Acknowledgments I was delighted to find my name (who wouldn't?) The thing reads: "The blog-site of Professor G. P. Sastry also provided us with helpful information."
This reminded me of a mythological tidbit told me by my Father as to how the squirrel got its stripes on its back. Apparently Raam was coolly watching the building of the bridge to Lanka (the controversial Ram Sethu) by his monkey-warriors. They were all carrying huge boulders and dumping them in the sea tirelessly. A squirrel watching the commotion and the radiant face of Lord Raam had this desire to help in the supreme ongoing effort of Civil Engineering. And couldn't resist.
So, on a pious impulse, it dug itself into the sand, came up, ran to the seashore, and shook itself like the KGP dog does when he is bored, so that the sand sticking to its body dropped into the sea, thus contributing its pennyworth. It ran back and forth again and again and again till it stood stock still when it ran out of breath. Watching the squirrel, Raam walked down and held the squirrel up in his left palm and, with his three right fingers, stroked down its back gently in loving Acknowledgment, leaving those permanent indelible marks of his running fingerprints.
***************************************************************************************************************
The other is the lovely Dinner Table Book titled:
"60 Years of Department of Physics & Meteorology"
It is Dinner Table Book because, though thinner and less expensive, it took that much more time to read, chew and digest than the Coffee One. Needless to say, my good name is there in a dozen places (I didn't count though) including the From the Desk of the HOD by Samit. As expected, Pratik decided to be Anonymous...after me, he will be the most modest.
The sentence that tickled me pink goes under the photo item of my Guru SDM:
"Prof. G. P. Sastry, who is admired for his pedagogy, worked on the electrodynamics of anisotropic media and Cherenkov radiation for his Ph D under the supervision of Prof. Datta Majumdar."
That is because the word 'pedagogy' always amused me somehow.
See the Limerick I posted long long ago:
**************************************************************************************************************
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Soggy Foggy Groggy Limerick
Somu has his Cosmology
And Pratik his Demo-gogy
They wrote a book
It has a great look
And cites my poor pedagogy
And Pratik his Demo-gogy
They wrote a book
It has a great look
And cites my poor pedagogy
Dedicated to my younger colleagues Professors Somnath Bharadwaj and Pratik Khastigir.
And indebted to Dr. Shyamal Chakrabarty (didn't do spell-checks) for this free-for-all art form...
===========================================================================
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Swadharma
=============================================================================
Shreyaan swadharmo vigunah paradharmotsvanushthitat
Swadharmo nidhanam shreyah paradharmo bhayavahah
....Bhagavad Gita 3-35
***************************************************************************************************************
Better stick to your beloved profession
At the risk of stagnation
Than jump jobs for promotion
And suffer infernal frustration
....gpsastry
*****************************************************************************************************************
Whom God has equipped with flippers should not monkey around with zippers.
....James Thurber in The Seal Who Became Famous
****************************************************************************************************************
During the 1960s of our glorious youth, we had to pretend that we knew all about Parkinson's Law and Peter's Principle even if we never read those bestsellers. Otherwise we risked being dubbed illiterate (even though we might have read all of Dale Carnegie's stuff between the lines so that we can 'win friends and influence people and stop worrying and start living'...never easy things to do).
The canonical illustration of Peter's Principle is that of a Wizard Automobile Mechanic who had to be promoted as Personnel Manager because he quickly scaled the ladder of Junior Mechanic, Senior Mechanic, Superior Mechanic, and was stagnating in the topmost rung as Super Mechanic. With the result that for the next 20 years he was a colossal failure and couldn't be promoted and suffered mental agony while the Firm was making losses since they couldn't find a good enough replacement for him in the Automobile Section.
I have watched several instances of Peter's Principle during my years at IIT KGP. I cite only one.
Gagan Babu was a wizard as a Mathematician. And not in Applied Mathematics which, excuse me, falls between the two stools of Mathematics & Physics. He was a foremost General Relativist, apart from other branches of Pure Mathematics. He built a School in our Mathematics Department which must be still thriving. And he was stagnating in that Department as an Assistant Professor (then just below Full Professor). For reasons that had possibly to do with the fact that IIT is an Engg Institution devoted to applications of mathematics to the real world, there was then no vacant slot for a Professor of General Relativity in the Mathematics Department. So, he was transferred to the Department of Physics and Meteorology on promotion as a Full Professor.
So far so good. SDM, basically a Physicist by long training and a Mathematician by genes left General Relativity behind him by then and was engaged fruitfully in other branches of Physics and Mathematics important for Physics. SDM was unique...he could dodge boredom every once in a while by shifting to other branches because he was, well, a Genius.
Gagan Babu, after shifting to the Phy Dept wanted to do Quantum Physics in which he had no training. QM is not a branch of Mathematics, whatever von Neumann may say. It was born in sin (unlike GR). It had to do all sorts of acrobatics to explain hundreds of conflicting experimental results in as diverse fields as Thermodynamics, Spectroscopy, Physics of Matter and Radiation and much else. No one without a mastery of Physics can hope to do worthwhile research in it or even teach it to IITians.
And Gagan Babu wanted to learn QM from Dirac's book starting at the ripe age of 50. I don't think he enjoyed his tenure in the Phy Dept for the decade he was with us as much as he did while he was in the Math Dept before he shifted.
****************************************************************************************************************
When I first met my son in his crib in the Maternity Ward of Jalgaon when he was all of 5 days, he was sleeping like a log. I gently poked him in his ribs. He winked and smiled knowingly and slept off, proving beyond doubt that he has my DNA all over...we are born lazy...neither he nor I ever enjoyed hard work.
And when he was admitted to the Campus KV at IIT KGP, his joy knew no bounds...most of the time they gave Games. And he was so good at that sort of a thing that he was made School Captain in his Class XI. Well, he did top in his Class X (there is a Teak Bulletin Board with his name scribbled on it in front of their Office Room to prove it). But that is simply because one doesn't need hard work to achieve it...anyone can do it if they have a good Memory and Recall. Except in Math where he had the benefit of expert coaching from our family friend Dr Mrs NP.
Class XI is so different than Class X...he was like Gagan Babu with this difference that he had to captain his school.
Like a good father, I sent him to the most popular Coaching Classes in Chemistry and Physics and tried to wash my hands off...one should never attempt to teach one's son except when the son asks for it...the Father-Son Relation is worse than Wife-Husband's. You tend to lose a friend without gaining anything. Try and teach your wife as simple a thing as Driving...
But the very first day he returned from his Chemistry Tutor's Class, he threw his Note Book on my face saying that he understood nothing. None of the material in his scribblings appeared to make any sense to me...they were all weird problems to do with gases and their combustion with other gases or some such inane stuff. By the bombastic name 'Eudiometry'...never heard of it. And the thing repeated after every class and he was apparently being insulted in public and was in tears.
I thought I was a genius in Physics which is the Mother of all Sciences. And to relieve his agony, I bought the popular problem-solving books by Sarin & Sarin and D P Agarwal and tried to flip though them nonchalantly.
Within a week I was like Gagan Babu...understood nothing except that all matter is made of atoms and molecules...which is not of much help. But there was no other way because he had the best tutor available in the Campus. Learning Chemistry at 55 and then trying to coach one's son for IIT JEE proved to be such a Herculean task that I was in tears and he was consoling me...
But I persisted...there is nothing more pitiable than persisting like a moorkho in academic matters. And time was slipping by. At the end of Class XI, both of us decided that Rosenmund Reaction was beyond both of us. And we ought to find a way out.
And then I asked how his Physics was going. He laughed and replied it was worse than Chemistry. And he was saying that he would surely fail in his compulsory School Biology also.
It was then that his Chemistry and Physics started taking a toll of my Biology...I mean married life...whatever was left of it.
Then my son and I realized that he needs one-on-one Tutors in Chemistry and Biology and one-on-two in Physics from the Horse's Mouth...he picked up a friend of his and I started coaching them in Physics...a classic instance of "two is better than one"
They both just made it through the French Window...Phew!
And he topped in his School Biology...thanx to a Wizard called Jha Sir...
And I no longer needed those unavailable blue pills...
=============================================================================
Shreyaan swadharmo vigunah paradharmotsvanushthitat
Swadharmo nidhanam shreyah paradharmo bhayavahah
....Bhagavad Gita 3-35
***************************************************************************************************************
Better stick to your beloved profession
At the risk of stagnation
Than jump jobs for promotion
And suffer infernal frustration
....gpsastry
*****************************************************************************************************************
Whom God has equipped with flippers should not monkey around with zippers.
....James Thurber in The Seal Who Became Famous
****************************************************************************************************************
During the 1960s of our glorious youth, we had to pretend that we knew all about Parkinson's Law and Peter's Principle even if we never read those bestsellers. Otherwise we risked being dubbed illiterate (even though we might have read all of Dale Carnegie's stuff between the lines so that we can 'win friends and influence people and stop worrying and start living'...never easy things to do).
The canonical illustration of Peter's Principle is that of a Wizard Automobile Mechanic who had to be promoted as Personnel Manager because he quickly scaled the ladder of Junior Mechanic, Senior Mechanic, Superior Mechanic, and was stagnating in the topmost rung as Super Mechanic. With the result that for the next 20 years he was a colossal failure and couldn't be promoted and suffered mental agony while the Firm was making losses since they couldn't find a good enough replacement for him in the Automobile Section.
I have watched several instances of Peter's Principle during my years at IIT KGP. I cite only one.
Gagan Babu was a wizard as a Mathematician. And not in Applied Mathematics which, excuse me, falls between the two stools of Mathematics & Physics. He was a foremost General Relativist, apart from other branches of Pure Mathematics. He built a School in our Mathematics Department which must be still thriving. And he was stagnating in that Department as an Assistant Professor (then just below Full Professor). For reasons that had possibly to do with the fact that IIT is an Engg Institution devoted to applications of mathematics to the real world, there was then no vacant slot for a Professor of General Relativity in the Mathematics Department. So, he was transferred to the Department of Physics and Meteorology on promotion as a Full Professor.
So far so good. SDM, basically a Physicist by long training and a Mathematician by genes left General Relativity behind him by then and was engaged fruitfully in other branches of Physics and Mathematics important for Physics. SDM was unique...he could dodge boredom every once in a while by shifting to other branches because he was, well, a Genius.
Gagan Babu, after shifting to the Phy Dept wanted to do Quantum Physics in which he had no training. QM is not a branch of Mathematics, whatever von Neumann may say. It was born in sin (unlike GR). It had to do all sorts of acrobatics to explain hundreds of conflicting experimental results in as diverse fields as Thermodynamics, Spectroscopy, Physics of Matter and Radiation and much else. No one without a mastery of Physics can hope to do worthwhile research in it or even teach it to IITians.
And Gagan Babu wanted to learn QM from Dirac's book starting at the ripe age of 50. I don't think he enjoyed his tenure in the Phy Dept for the decade he was with us as much as he did while he was in the Math Dept before he shifted.
****************************************************************************************************************
When I first met my son in his crib in the Maternity Ward of Jalgaon when he was all of 5 days, he was sleeping like a log. I gently poked him in his ribs. He winked and smiled knowingly and slept off, proving beyond doubt that he has my DNA all over...we are born lazy...neither he nor I ever enjoyed hard work.
And when he was admitted to the Campus KV at IIT KGP, his joy knew no bounds...most of the time they gave Games. And he was so good at that sort of a thing that he was made School Captain in his Class XI. Well, he did top in his Class X (there is a Teak Bulletin Board with his name scribbled on it in front of their Office Room to prove it). But that is simply because one doesn't need hard work to achieve it...anyone can do it if they have a good Memory and Recall. Except in Math where he had the benefit of expert coaching from our family friend Dr Mrs NP.
Class XI is so different than Class X...he was like Gagan Babu with this difference that he had to captain his school.
Like a good father, I sent him to the most popular Coaching Classes in Chemistry and Physics and tried to wash my hands off...one should never attempt to teach one's son except when the son asks for it...the Father-Son Relation is worse than Wife-Husband's. You tend to lose a friend without gaining anything. Try and teach your wife as simple a thing as Driving...
But the very first day he returned from his Chemistry Tutor's Class, he threw his Note Book on my face saying that he understood nothing. None of the material in his scribblings appeared to make any sense to me...they were all weird problems to do with gases and their combustion with other gases or some such inane stuff. By the bombastic name 'Eudiometry'...never heard of it. And the thing repeated after every class and he was apparently being insulted in public and was in tears.
I thought I was a genius in Physics which is the Mother of all Sciences. And to relieve his agony, I bought the popular problem-solving books by Sarin & Sarin and D P Agarwal and tried to flip though them nonchalantly.
Within a week I was like Gagan Babu...understood nothing except that all matter is made of atoms and molecules...which is not of much help. But there was no other way because he had the best tutor available in the Campus. Learning Chemistry at 55 and then trying to coach one's son for IIT JEE proved to be such a Herculean task that I was in tears and he was consoling me...
But I persisted...there is nothing more pitiable than persisting like a moorkho in academic matters. And time was slipping by. At the end of Class XI, both of us decided that Rosenmund Reaction was beyond both of us. And we ought to find a way out.
And then I asked how his Physics was going. He laughed and replied it was worse than Chemistry. And he was saying that he would surely fail in his compulsory School Biology also.
It was then that his Chemistry and Physics started taking a toll of my Biology...I mean married life...whatever was left of it.
Then my son and I realized that he needs one-on-one Tutors in Chemistry and Biology and one-on-two in Physics from the Horse's Mouth...he picked up a friend of his and I started coaching them in Physics...a classic instance of "two is better than one"
They both just made it through the French Window...Phew!
And he topped in his School Biology...thanx to a Wizard called Jha Sir...
And I no longer needed those unavailable blue pills...
=============================================================================
Friday, December 9, 2011
Self-Pollination
============================================================================
We read in our school books that Mother Nature goes to great lengths to avoid Inbreeding, particularly in the plant kingdom. Most flowers like the javaa phool (hibiscus) have taller stamens than carpels to avoid self-pollination. While I was sitting and smoking on the lawn bench of the tiny lawn of our Faculty Hostel at KGP, I discovered an extreme example of this abhorrence of Nature...a species of tiny flowers growing around have their stamens and carpels screened away from one another by the petal itself...a delightful sight to watch. In our seaside Village on the Coast of Coromandel of Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo we had hundreds of palm trees. About half of them were male and the better half female...Who said Man is the most intelligent?...
In the human kingdom also consanguinity (inbreeding) within large families and sects reduces the population, like in the famous Parsis. But there are families that insist that they marry within their sect. A branch of our own extended family which was a 'closed set' had this feature: All their boys are geniuses in their own fields; but all girls while extremely good-looking are jara nadan; for generations.
I don't know about Oxbridge but I read Feynman being asked to quit MIT after his UG and shift to Princeton for his Ph D, to avoid Inbreeding. I also heard that IIT Kanpur (being a clone of the best of the US) had this tradition of giving their Research Scholars (like KK) the heave-ho, asking them to join as Faculty elsewhere, prove their worth and try and return later if they wish (like DC). Complete Cross-Pollination.
But during the 1960s when I joined IIT KGP, I found no such rules against Inbreeding. The tradition was for Professors to try and absorb their Research Scholars as Associate Lecturers or JRAs and make them climb the ladder slowly and steadily till they become Professors if they are lucky thirty years later; and let them try and absorb their Scholars. Thorough Self-Pollination. And since the number of permanent positions is limited and decidedly less than the number of Scholars there were tricks and intrigues and the works.
For the record, throughout my stay there for 40 years, NONE joined as a Full Professor in our Phy Dept of IIT KGP from outside (if my memory serves me right...GB doesn't count...he was already in our Math Dept as AP).
But it was all ok in a way...our students did us proud enough. We taught them Physics so badly in their B Sc that one of them went to Kanpur for his M Sc with high hopes and found it worse and ended up as the present Governor of the Reserve Bank of India...
One of my colleagues who climbed the tedious ladder mentioned above told me this story:
He was then a Research Scholar under a well-known Professor and was applying for a post-doc after six years or so, having exhausted all other options. And he left his Application Form for Comments to be filled in and forwarded by his renowned Guide. And happened to have a sneak-peek.
To the query: "How long will the Applicant take to complete his Ph D?", the answer turned out to be:
"About six more years, give or take a year"
**********************************************************************************************
P. S. This Post got delayed because Ishani (completing 2 years next week) jumped into my lap and ordered me to play on my laptop her favorite video: "bloggu bloggu...boru boru..."
=============================================================================
We read in our school books that Mother Nature goes to great lengths to avoid Inbreeding, particularly in the plant kingdom. Most flowers like the javaa phool (hibiscus) have taller stamens than carpels to avoid self-pollination. While I was sitting and smoking on the lawn bench of the tiny lawn of our Faculty Hostel at KGP, I discovered an extreme example of this abhorrence of Nature...a species of tiny flowers growing around have their stamens and carpels screened away from one another by the petal itself...a delightful sight to watch. In our seaside Village on the Coast of Coromandel of Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo we had hundreds of palm trees. About half of them were male and the better half female...Who said Man is the most intelligent?...
In the human kingdom also consanguinity (inbreeding) within large families and sects reduces the population, like in the famous Parsis. But there are families that insist that they marry within their sect. A branch of our own extended family which was a 'closed set' had this feature: All their boys are geniuses in their own fields; but all girls while extremely good-looking are jara nadan; for generations.
I don't know about Oxbridge but I read Feynman being asked to quit MIT after his UG and shift to Princeton for his Ph D, to avoid Inbreeding. I also heard that IIT Kanpur (being a clone of the best of the US) had this tradition of giving their Research Scholars (like KK) the heave-ho, asking them to join as Faculty elsewhere, prove their worth and try and return later if they wish (like DC). Complete Cross-Pollination.
But during the 1960s when I joined IIT KGP, I found no such rules against Inbreeding. The tradition was for Professors to try and absorb their Research Scholars as Associate Lecturers or JRAs and make them climb the ladder slowly and steadily till they become Professors if they are lucky thirty years later; and let them try and absorb their Scholars. Thorough Self-Pollination. And since the number of permanent positions is limited and decidedly less than the number of Scholars there were tricks and intrigues and the works.
For the record, throughout my stay there for 40 years, NONE joined as a Full Professor in our Phy Dept of IIT KGP from outside (if my memory serves me right...GB doesn't count...he was already in our Math Dept as AP).
But it was all ok in a way...our students did us proud enough. We taught them Physics so badly in their B Sc that one of them went to Kanpur for his M Sc with high hopes and found it worse and ended up as the present Governor of the Reserve Bank of India...
One of my colleagues who climbed the tedious ladder mentioned above told me this story:
He was then a Research Scholar under a well-known Professor and was applying for a post-doc after six years or so, having exhausted all other options. And he left his Application Form for Comments to be filled in and forwarded by his renowned Guide. And happened to have a sneak-peek.
To the query: "How long will the Applicant take to complete his Ph D?", the answer turned out to be:
"About six more years, give or take a year"
**********************************************************************************************
P. S. This Post got delayed because Ishani (completing 2 years next week) jumped into my lap and ordered me to play on my laptop her favorite video: "bloggu bloggu...boru boru..."
=============================================================================
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Reminiscence Circuitry
============================================================================
I asked Aniket, when he was in Hyderabad a couple of years back, if he didn't indulge in KGP nostalgia. He had left KGP a decade back then after a 5-year stint there. I thought a decade is just about the right time for nostalgia to ripen. And then there was this shopworn truism that one can take a KGPian out of KGP but not the other way round.
He simply said: "No"
I was a little taken aback because he is not the "business first, pleasure arterwards" sort as Sam Weller said about King Richard the Third "wen he stabbed the other King in the tower, afore he smothered the babies"
Quite the other way round if I know him aright...we are birds of similar feather.
I then asked him how come?
His reply was unique: "I have such a vivid memory that I remember the past as if it was yesterday"
I could well imagine that one can't be too nostalgic of yesterday's events. Rather. Maybe that is why his blogspot has so few reminiscences.
Proper nostalgia requires a series of memory filters. Particularly if you are in this Reminiscence Business. RKN's My Days, among his other pieces, is an example. The other one I read is Thurber's outrageous tales of his Columbus, Ohio, years.
Now that I am also in this Reminiscence Mode with a vengeance after my retirement, I think I am sort of an expert on the subject. Very few must have written about 850 tall tales on a daily basis culling memories of as uninteresting places as Muthukur and Kharagpur.
If one is a blogger of Current Events like my idol Shobha De, one can rest assured of an audience in thousands. And get paid too. On the other hand, I count my blogging worthwhile if I can find a handful of readers of my junk on a regular basis. People (except possibly Research Scholars @ KGP) have no time at all for reading things other than what is useful or titillating. At best they can afford 5 minutes. That places a severe restriction on the number of words in a typical post.
To squeeze an experience of a day or more into 5 short minutes requires a Circuitry. Hartley-type old-fashioned oscillators always fascinated me. They have a DC supply and an AC output. And a positive feedback that doesn't escalate. And pick up their signals from circuit noise. And work in the nonlinear domain of the Dynamic Characteristic. And their tuned amplifier with its positive feedback runs in the Class C mode, meaning it supplies just 'pips' of power in the right phase to compensate for the ohmic losses. The result of all this complex arrangement is that you get a perfectly sinusoidal waveform steady over hours (if Tarpado-da helps you with the Pot in the Exam while your Teachers gossip about their HoD's tantrums).
For a Reminiscence Circuit, it is not enough if you pick up your topic signal from your Memory Noise and amplify it. You have to distort it by another Modulator Circuit. And suppress the unwanted sidebands. And then Demodulate it earthing the original signal but getting the Processed Waveform. And then apply Power Amplification with an apt Push-Pull Circuit. And then trim it and feed it to the Speaker which converts the audio output in the brain into video words of Hinglish.
Very complicated.
The end result is that the Reminiscence Writer or Blogger completely loses the initial signal picked up from his Memory Noise and starts believing in his printed or blogged word so faithlessly that he stands accused of dissembling if not outright lying. Just to come up with a readable short piece. Blunt Truth is unreadable, period.
About a year ago, I blogged a piece titled Bitter Surprises:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/10/bitter-surprises.html
Teernajee, then in Class VII or VIII, read it and remarked pithily:
"It is a blogful of gul"
And she said a mouthful!
***************************************************************************************************************
Postscript:
Aniket, and possibly Pratik, cracked the encryption of yesterday's blog in a jiffy. The Author of the quoted Letter (YXY) is indeed Prof MLM, a highly respected ex-HoD of IIT, KGP who was the Father of the Phy Dept's Computer Lab.
His pleasant encounters with Prof MLM must have finally done the impossible for Aniket...he must have felt fondly nostalgic about his HoD...I don't know about Pratik who was a latecomer to KGP Phy Dept's Fascinating Decades.
=============================================================================
I asked Aniket, when he was in Hyderabad a couple of years back, if he didn't indulge in KGP nostalgia. He had left KGP a decade back then after a 5-year stint there. I thought a decade is just about the right time for nostalgia to ripen. And then there was this shopworn truism that one can take a KGPian out of KGP but not the other way round.
He simply said: "No"
I was a little taken aback because he is not the "business first, pleasure arterwards" sort as Sam Weller said about King Richard the Third "wen he stabbed the other King in the tower, afore he smothered the babies"
Quite the other way round if I know him aright...we are birds of similar feather.
I then asked him how come?
His reply was unique: "I have such a vivid memory that I remember the past as if it was yesterday"
I could well imagine that one can't be too nostalgic of yesterday's events. Rather. Maybe that is why his blogspot has so few reminiscences.
Proper nostalgia requires a series of memory filters. Particularly if you are in this Reminiscence Business. RKN's My Days, among his other pieces, is an example. The other one I read is Thurber's outrageous tales of his Columbus, Ohio, years.
Now that I am also in this Reminiscence Mode with a vengeance after my retirement, I think I am sort of an expert on the subject. Very few must have written about 850 tall tales on a daily basis culling memories of as uninteresting places as Muthukur and Kharagpur.
If one is a blogger of Current Events like my idol Shobha De, one can rest assured of an audience in thousands. And get paid too. On the other hand, I count my blogging worthwhile if I can find a handful of readers of my junk on a regular basis. People (except possibly Research Scholars @ KGP) have no time at all for reading things other than what is useful or titillating. At best they can afford 5 minutes. That places a severe restriction on the number of words in a typical post.
To squeeze an experience of a day or more into 5 short minutes requires a Circuitry. Hartley-type old-fashioned oscillators always fascinated me. They have a DC supply and an AC output. And a positive feedback that doesn't escalate. And pick up their signals from circuit noise. And work in the nonlinear domain of the Dynamic Characteristic. And their tuned amplifier with its positive feedback runs in the Class C mode, meaning it supplies just 'pips' of power in the right phase to compensate for the ohmic losses. The result of all this complex arrangement is that you get a perfectly sinusoidal waveform steady over hours (if Tarpado-da helps you with the Pot in the Exam while your Teachers gossip about their HoD's tantrums).
For a Reminiscence Circuit, it is not enough if you pick up your topic signal from your Memory Noise and amplify it. You have to distort it by another Modulator Circuit. And suppress the unwanted sidebands. And then Demodulate it earthing the original signal but getting the Processed Waveform. And then apply Power Amplification with an apt Push-Pull Circuit. And then trim it and feed it to the Speaker which converts the audio output in the brain into video words of Hinglish.
Very complicated.
The end result is that the Reminiscence Writer or Blogger completely loses the initial signal picked up from his Memory Noise and starts believing in his printed or blogged word so faithlessly that he stands accused of dissembling if not outright lying. Just to come up with a readable short piece. Blunt Truth is unreadable, period.
About a year ago, I blogged a piece titled Bitter Surprises:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/10/bitter-surprises.html
Teernajee, then in Class VII or VIII, read it and remarked pithily:
"It is a blogful of gul"
And she said a mouthful!
***************************************************************************************************************
Postscript:
Aniket, and possibly Pratik, cracked the encryption of yesterday's blog in a jiffy. The Author of the quoted Letter (YXY) is indeed Prof MLM, a highly respected ex-HoD of IIT, KGP who was the Father of the Phy Dept's Computer Lab.
His pleasant encounters with Prof MLM must have finally done the impossible for Aniket...he must have felt fondly nostalgic about his HoD...I don't know about Pratik who was a latecomer to KGP Phy Dept's Fascinating Decades.
=============================================================================
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Item Girl
============================================================================
I think I should stop that antihistamine pill. The first day when the suffering was most, it worked wonders...just a blackout for 7 hours. The next day it was oh, ok. But today has been funny. It was not sleep, nor waking, nor dream, nor samadhi, nor euphoric high, nor oceanic low, nor anything classifiable. Mind just hanging fire. And unable to latch on to any bloggable topic; till this mail (see below) arrived. Clutching at straws.
It all started with a delicious phone call from my student-turned HoD of the Phy Dept at IIT KGP, Samit, wishing me a Happy Teachers Day. It turned out that is only pourparlers. He then mentioned that a Diamond Jubilee Alumni Meet of KGPhians will be held on December 3. And, among others, I am invited. With wife. Airfare and Hospitality for both. And a Souvenir celebrating the Occasion is in the offing. And I am invited to contribute. And Pratik is in-charge of the entire Do including acting as the CPU of the Coffee Table Memento. And no excuses will be allowed.
Well, Samit, in spite of sitting in my classes as a student, and thereafter as a Co-Lab-in-Charge of the 4th year lab, hasn't read the dark side of my lunar personality. I am so shy of people that I wanted to skip my marriage ceremony, but my bride protested and put her foot down...and there it stays.
And moreover, she and I had been to KGP on an auld lang syne trip a couple of years back. And there are certain things you should not do twice...like attending the funeral of your M-i-L. It is never the same. So, I thanked him from the bottom of my heavy heart and made eminently valid excuses and alibis for skipping the Diamond Event.
As for my Contribution to the Souvenir, I called up Pratik (whose nonchalance in taking up such an onerous responsibility I admired) and told him that there are about a couple of lakh words in my 850 blogposts as my KGP memorabilia and he is most welcome to lift any of them he likes...only don't ask me to write afresh for the Occasion. Hoping that he will take one on SDM.
He ended up lifting 5...At the last count.
I haven't seen the thing in cold print, but I guess that others have at most one each under their byline (as us journos call it). So, I wrote to them that this disproportionately large number of items of mine make me feel like the Item Girl of the Phy Dept. Which I sort of always was...whenever someone goes on planned (or even mat or pat) Leave in the Phy Dept and wanted someone as a standby for taking their classes, the cry used to go out: "Where is that gps?...he doesn't do anything else worthwhile for the Dept."
And I was also scared that other esteemed colleagues and contributors may be offended...you see, in our academic world, the number of publications count, from womb to tomb.
So, as I was lying on my back with Ishani on my belly, she trying to make me sing those fun songs from Missmma again and again, while I was trying to get a topic for the day's blog, and checking my In-Box on my Nokia, I got this wonderful mail, smothering all my worries, blogwise and otherwise.
It made my day.
I paste it below.
The idea is that Aniket & Co will tease out who the author is, whose signature I encrypted with enough hints...
**************************************************************************************************************
============================================================================
I think I should stop that antihistamine pill. The first day when the suffering was most, it worked wonders...just a blackout for 7 hours. The next day it was oh, ok. But today has been funny. It was not sleep, nor waking, nor dream, nor samadhi, nor euphoric high, nor oceanic low, nor anything classifiable. Mind just hanging fire. And unable to latch on to any bloggable topic; till this mail (see below) arrived. Clutching at straws.
It all started with a delicious phone call from my student-turned HoD of the Phy Dept at IIT KGP, Samit, wishing me a Happy Teachers Day. It turned out that is only pourparlers. He then mentioned that a Diamond Jubilee Alumni Meet of KGPhians will be held on December 3. And, among others, I am invited. With wife. Airfare and Hospitality for both. And a Souvenir celebrating the Occasion is in the offing. And I am invited to contribute. And Pratik is in-charge of the entire Do including acting as the CPU of the Coffee Table Memento. And no excuses will be allowed.
Well, Samit, in spite of sitting in my classes as a student, and thereafter as a Co-Lab-in-Charge of the 4th year lab, hasn't read the dark side of my lunar personality. I am so shy of people that I wanted to skip my marriage ceremony, but my bride protested and put her foot down...and there it stays.
And moreover, she and I had been to KGP on an auld lang syne trip a couple of years back. And there are certain things you should not do twice...like attending the funeral of your M-i-L. It is never the same. So, I thanked him from the bottom of my heavy heart and made eminently valid excuses and alibis for skipping the Diamond Event.
As for my Contribution to the Souvenir, I called up Pratik (whose nonchalance in taking up such an onerous responsibility I admired) and told him that there are about a couple of lakh words in my 850 blogposts as my KGP memorabilia and he is most welcome to lift any of them he likes...only don't ask me to write afresh for the Occasion. Hoping that he will take one on SDM.
He ended up lifting 5...At the last count.
I haven't seen the thing in cold print, but I guess that others have at most one each under their byline (as us journos call it). So, I wrote to them that this disproportionately large number of items of mine make me feel like the Item Girl of the Phy Dept. Which I sort of always was...whenever someone goes on planned (or even mat or pat) Leave in the Phy Dept and wanted someone as a standby for taking their classes, the cry used to go out: "Where is that gps?...he doesn't do anything else worthwhile for the Dept."
And I was also scared that other esteemed colleagues and contributors may be offended...you see, in our academic world, the number of publications count, from womb to tomb.
So, as I was lying on my back with Ishani on my belly, she trying to make me sing those fun songs from Missmma again and again, while I was trying to get a topic for the day's blog, and checking my In-Box on my Nokia, I got this wonderful mail, smothering all my worries, blogwise and otherwise.
It made my day.
I paste it below.
The idea is that Aniket & Co will tease out who the author is, whose signature I encrypted with enough hints...
**************************************************************************************************************
Dear Sastry,
It is more than a decade we had met last in IIT. Your writings in the souvenir are the excellent ones. Perhaps you don't know that I happen to be one of your admirers because of your caliber, simplicity, aloofness and helpful attitude towards all. I understand that you are now staying at Hyderabad.
How are your wife and your son? Regards and best wishes for all of you,
Yours sincerely,
YXY
YXY
P. S. Please respond. I like to keep contact with you.
============================================================================
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